Friday, 31 August 2012

Hello lovely readers. Hope you've had a fab August. Mine's been busy with various bits and pieces. Not a lot of crafting done but my mojo does appear to be coming back. Yay!

At the beginning of the month my husband and I went up to Edinburgh to see some of the Fringe Festival. It was great fun and I would recommend it to anyone. Edinburgh is a beautiful city, though it is a bit hilly! Despite the fact it was a quite active holiday, I came back feeling quite refreshed. It was fab to get away from normality for a bit.

Shortly after getting back I started a new beading project. Later in the year an exciting book is being published by Jean Power and Kate McKinnon (with Christina Vandervlist, Dustin Wedekind and Gabriella van Diepen) called "Contemporary Geometric Beadwork". Info about the book can be found on its blog and facebook page. A few of the patterns have been released to people who have preordered the book so we can play with them. I decided to have a go at Christina's Helix Bangle pattern. I changed it a little and made it into a hairclip.

Super exciting news is that its probably going to appear in the book! I emailed Kate and she wants to include it along with my pattern modifications and another version- so guess what I'm currently beading? I'm making 2 more in different sizes and shortly I'll be posting them off to Kate for shooting. I'm VERY excited about this!

Well that's the only bit of creating I finished this month but I have started a few bits in addition to 2 more hairclips. I am probably going to open an etsy shop in the near future selling beading patterns and handmade resin cabochons. I was mostly spurred into the cabochons when a fellow member of OTTBS asked me if I could make her some watch part cabs. I've cast some for her along with more for the shop. They're currently in the sanding/polishing stage.

Something I will be working on after all this is the bead-it-froward quilt project organised by Bead&Button magazine to raise money for breast cancer research. Basically, beaders from all over the world will be creating 1.5" squares of beadwork that will get sewn together in several quilts and be auctioned off. More info about joining in can be found here. OTTBS facebook group has many members who are joining in and they've already produced many squares for the quilts. The organiser of the event has said that our quilts can be kept together, which is fantastic. Plenty of time for you to join in too, either individually or with our group.

Well, sanding and beading is waiting for me so I'm off to make another bucket of tea in preparation. Have a fab September all, whatever you're up to.

Sunday, 12 August 2012

Hardly any crafting at all happened in June and July. Lost the bug and real life got hectic. I know I didn't make anything at all in July and don't remember completing anything in June. I did go to the fantastic Laura McCabe workshop over at stitch'n'craft towards the end of June but I'll blog about that separately one day.

Hoping my crafting bug is returning now and I'll get back blogging properly too.
xxx

PS. Does anyone else find it amusing that blogger's own spell checker doesn't recognise 'blog' and 'blogging' as real words?!﻿